Book Finder

The authors have adapted their 1998 play of the same title into this easy-to-read novel where Nicole Burns, a contemporary 10th-grade student who questions why they have to read The Diary of Anne Frank, is mysteriously transported in time into the person of Nicole Bernhardt, a 15-year-old Jewish girl living in occupied France. Nicole meets Anne Frank who helps her see the value of studying the Holocaust as she returns as Nicole Burns.

In this modern reimagining of Anne of Green Gables, Anne is an ABBA-loving singer/actor/writer of disco-operas, queer, Japanese-American who longs to be understood for her artistic genius. Recently relocated to middle-of-nowhere Greenville and starting at a new school, Anne has a tendency to A) fall in love quickly, deeply, and effervescently and B) fly off the handle in the face of jerks. Both personality quirks quickly come into play when the soccer team boos the premiere of her disco performance, which―in a roundabout way―introduces her to her new BFF, Berry, and she soon after meets the girl of her dreams, Gilly.

Firlik brings honest appraisal of her work with less heroism and more day-to-day problem solving as she moves from intern to doctor. Along the way she removes a nail in a carpenter’s head and allows maggots to clean pus out of an infected brain in this humorous and candid memoir.

Seventeen-year-old Sarah Jane’s journal entries chronicle her journey by clipper ship from Massachusetts to Alabama, then on to Russia and other European countries in 1857. Photos, maps, drawings, and letters accompany journal text and bring the passengers and setting to life.

How far would you go to stand up for what you think is right? Would you be willing to defy a King, who also happens to be your uncle? These are the decisions Antigone faces when King Creon orders that Antigone’s brothers go unburied after a bloody civil war. Should she risk death or imprisonment to honor the dead and her god or blindly follow King Creon’s decree, leaving her brothers’ bodies to rot in the sun? As a companion text, try a Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This text reflects the theme of civil disobedience: standing up against injustice through peaceful demonstration.

Greek goddesses experience the highs and lows of romance and heartbreak in dramatic ways that teens can relate to. This book relates the stories from the goddesses’ points of view.

After her sophomore year in high school, Apple Starkington, who grew up feeling like she didn’t fit in with her White father and stepmother, spends the summer at the Turtle Mountain Chippewa reservation getting to know her Native family members for the first time.

The lives of a tight-knit group of 14 young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps.  

Watch as Traci Chee reads a short excerpt from We Are Not Free

Pulga has his dreams.
Chico has his grief.
Peque a has her pride.

And these three teens have one another. But none of them have illusions about the town they’ve grown up in and the dangers that surround them. When those threats become all too real, the trio knows they have no choice but to run: from their country, from their families, from their beloved home. Crossing from Guatemala through Mexico, they follow the route of La Bestia, the perilous train system that might deliver them to a better life — if they are lucky enough to survive the journey. With nothing but the bags on their backs and desperation drumming through their hearts, Pulga, Chico, and Peque a know there is no turning back, despite the unknown that awaits them. In this striking portrait of lives torn apart, the plight of migrants at the U.S. southern border is brought to light through poignant, vivid storytelling. An epic journey of danger, resilience, heartache, and hope. Spanish version is also available.

You go through life thinking there’s so much you need… . Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother. Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart. 

Boas was born in the Westerbork Concentration Camp in Holland and writes this book from five teenage perspectives he found in reading their diaries: David Rubinowicz, Yitzhak Rudashevski, Moshe Flinker, Eva Heyman, and Anne Frank. As Boas points out, “alongside the other four diaries, Anne’s looks different than when you read it by itself as the sole voice of the Holocaust.”

By winning the state high school basketball championship in 1955, ten teens from an Indianapolis school meant to be the centerpiece of racially segregated education in the state shattered the myth of their inferiority. Anchored by the astonishing Oscar Robertson, a future college and NBA star, the Crispus Attucks Tigers went down in history as the first state champions from Indianapolis and the first all-black team in U.S. history to win a racially open championship tournament—an integration they had forced with their on-court prowess. From native Hoosier and award-winning author Phillip Hoose comes this true story of a team up against impossible odds, making a difference when it mattered most.

High school junior Audrey has had it with her boyfriend Evan, who spends more time with his band than with her. So she dumps him. Within a day, he’s written a song, “Audrey Wait,” which rockets to the top of the charts and makes Audrey a target of Evan’s fans. What is it like to have your whole life spelled out in a three-minute pop song?

“Ezra looks like any other sixth grader with faded jeans, turned around cap and a mess of chestnut curls. You see, my brother is like any other eleven-year-old except when he isn’t.“ This story follows 14-year-old Jenny as she describes her day-to-day life with her younger autistic brother, Ezra. Ezra can be both her best friend as well as her biggest obstacle to living a normal life, and Jenny often finds herself stuck worrying about her younger brother. Through taking care of Ezra and a very special school project, Jenny ends up learning about her own character and strengths, and a way to shine despite everything else.

Aya lives in the Ivory Coast in the late 1970s, before civil war decimated the country. This is a view of African life not often shown in contemporary fiction—an Africa not unlike the West, told through the eyes of three girlfriends deciding between marriage, men and career.

Every Breedlove is a lawyer or soon will be, except Ivy Breedlove, who wants to be a historian, and her supposedly crazy Aunt Josephine who disappeared years ago. When Ivy’s Great Aunt Tib’s eyesight begins to fail, the responsibility of researching and writing the family history falls on Ivy, a task that she relishes. After learning that her Aunt Josephine is still alive, Ivy wants to find her. Relying on the expert skills of a wilderness guide named Mountain Mama, Ivy is led to Josephine’s log cabin in a remote area of the Adirondacks where she meets and gets to know her aunt while interviewing her for the family history. 

Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva are three very different girls who all meet the same bad boy with an irresistible knack for getting into their blood and under their skin. Will the choices they make and the paths they take lead them where they want to go?

While his father is in prison for treating a leader of the democracy movement, 15-year-old Chiko is drafted into the Burmese military. Trained to fight the rebel Karenni people, Chiko soon finds himself at the mercy of a young Karenni rebel fighter whose village was attacked by Burmese soldiers. Will the two remain enemies?

Sebastian and Aneesa create a YouTube pizza making show. For the first time, Sebastian feels like he is in a judge free zone. Because Aneesa is new in town, she doesn’t know his secret…the terrible, horrific secret that he accidentally shot and killed his infant sister when he was four years old.

In 1983 during South Korea’s Fifth Republic, apolitical Kim Hyun Sook seeks refuge in books at college and finds herself hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. 

Bone confronts illegitimacy, poverty, the troubled marriage of her mother and stepfather, and the stigma of being considered “white trash” as she comes of age in South Carolina.

A father’s anguished account of his promising son’s meth addiction and its painful impact on the entire family is honest, raw, and full of information about the realities of drug addiction.

Teen beauty queens. A desert island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to e-mail. And the spirit of fierce, feral competition that lives underground in girls, a savage brutality that can only be revealed by a journey into the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Oh, the horror, the horror! Only funnier. With evening gowns. And a body count.

Through slightly fictionalized poetry, readers learn about a girl born in Baltimore who grows up to become jazz singer Billie Holiday. Her life is in not white-washed, there’s sex and drugs along with the music, but ultimately the music shines through. Floyd Cooper’s illustrations are gorgeous and perfectly suited.